Tokyo, Japan, July 25, 2006--A research team at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has developed a sensor carpet that can categorize people by age and gender, according to Asia Pulse.
The prototype requires that people walk across it shoeless, but the team aims to improve the technology's precision so that it can be used in such places as convenience stores to analyze shopping patterns.
The carpet contains a thin layer of silicone rubber with built-in electrodes that show a change in electrical resistance and current flow depending on the forces applied to it as a person walks.
The information is analyzed by a computer to measure the subject's foot size, stride, walking speed, weight and center of gravity. By studying a group of 300 people, the team determined certain relationships, such as the fact that for a given foot size, younger people walk faster and with a longer stride.
The prototype carpet can distinguish between people in their 20s and 60s with nearly 100 per cent accuracy. Precision is around 50-60 per cent for people in their 30s, 40s and 50s. And gender can be determined with 70-80 per cent accuracy based on the fact that males and females have different centres of gravity.
